Power Relationships in the Birthday Party and Waiting for Godot

Dominance, as a term, refers to supremacy or complete control over another person or object. However, this authority over someone else will almost certainly have negative aspects, or at least far reaching repercussions. Furthermore, power struggles do not go unnoticed, but it is the socially acceptable way to do so. In Harold Pinter’s The Birthday Party and Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot, there are evident power relationships throughout the plays. These struggles are not just necessary to the plays, but they define the characters within certain parameters. For example, the relationship between Pozzo and Lucky in Waiting for Godot was written so as to show that the two characters can exist only in that bond. In The Birthday Party, the power relationship between Stanley, Goldberg, and McCann demonstrate an almost absurd and nonsensical correlation between power and dominance. Therefore, the nature and purpose of power relationships is to express the oppressive versus oppressed theme in a modernist perspective, where the relationship could theoretically exist in any frame of reference.
The affiliation between Pozzo and Lucky in Beckett’s work is somewhat irrational and senseless if applied to today’s rigid social structure. They are master to slave, overlord to servant, supervisor to underling. Their purpose, however, may not be as obvious. “Remark that I might just as well have been in his shoes and he in mine. If chance had not willed otherwise. To each one his due” (Beckett 31). This is one of Pozzo’s more philosophical moments, in contrast to his overseer-like dialogue of monosyllabic commands. He comments on the power relationship between he and Lucky, noting that it could have easily existed where Lucky was the master and Pozzo was the slave. However, “chance” had not wished it so, therefore Pozzo is dominant over Lucky. But what is the actual purpose of this symbiotic relationship? In...